


Drink to Remember

by secretsofluftnarp (luftie)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon Queer Relationship, Carlos isn't exactly the life of the party but he's down, Drinking, M/M, Nightclub, Queer Themes, Rebellious Cecil, Scientist carlos, Strexcorp, implied promiscuous pre-Carlos Cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:29:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luftie/pseuds/secretsofluftnarp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil hung on the doorway, grinning. “You said it was less fatal outside than usual, right?"</p><p>"By almost twenty standard fatality units." Carlos raised his eyebrows. "Were you thinking of doing something dangerous?"</p><p>"YES. Let's go CLUBBING."<br/> </p><p>Takes place after the events of episode 44 (Cookies), before anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drink to Remember

“CARLOS.”  
  
Carlos looked up from the loops and wires of science equipment he had been tinkering with on the kitchen table. Carlos suspected that it was trying to mate with the experimental mobile broadcasting equipment Cecil had left there, but Carlos wasn’t sure how to bring this up. He didn’t know what Cecil had been doing. It sounded like Cecil had been having ideas.  
  
Cecil hung on the doorway, grinning. “You said it was less fatal outside than usual, right?"  
  
"By almost twenty standard fatality units." Carlos raised his eyebrows. "Were you thinking of doing something dangerous?"

"YES. Let's go CLUBBING."

“Huh,” said Carlos, as though he had just seen an interesting and yet not entirely unexpected experimental result.

"I was thinking -- life is short, Carlos. Who knows how short life might be! And I haven't been out on the town -- well, to a particular spot just outside of town, in what is now the Barista District -- since the incident with the tarantulas and the ice cream in, god, what was it, the early two-thousands?”

"Is this some kind of mid-life crisis thing?" Carlos was kidding -- he was a good few years older than Cecil, who looked young for his age.  
  
"Psh, mid-life. As if the world as we know it might not be erased tomorrow, and all of us along with it."  
  
"Cecil, I know you've been really stressed out lately. About work and everything."  
  
"Which is why we should go out! Tear it up! Or down! Or – avoid tearing anything of consequence, but yes! Fun!"  
  
Carlos was skeptical. He was also very curious, one of the top two things a scientist is. "Tell me about this place."  
  
"It's an abandoned warehouse -- though too small to be a warehouse, now that I mention it, more like an abandoned brick one-story house with no visible windows and a barely visible door. I found that I...sort of found my people, you know? Out beyond official municipal boundaries, nobody really cares who you are or what ordinance you're breaking this week. It was very, very dangerous. And also lovely."  
  
"Is it a gay bar?"  
  
"A what?"  
  
Carlos tried a different tack. "Who would you see there?"  
  
"A little bit of everybody. The occasional community college professor, wanderers of the sand wastes, off-duty municipal employees..." Cecil dropped his voice suggestively. "Incluuuding a few off-duty Secret Police --"  
  
Carlos was very curious about what Cecil was implying, but he didn't press it immediately. He knew Cecil was going a bit stir-crazy, what with work and all. It was possible that this would be a good break. It was also possible that Cecil would need looking out for. Carlos slipped his danger meter (which was emitting dull "boop"s every minute or so, the least activity he'd seen all year) into the left pocket of his "evening" labcoat.

   
  
  


It was a little after ten p.m. – if time was still a thing – by the time they pulled up to the club in Carlos' economical but attractively sporty hybrid coupe. Cecil’s haphazard navigation (“Left at the cactus...right at the _other_ cactus...”) had given Carlos very little idea where they were.

Cecil put his hands on the brick of the apparently doorless, windowless building and rapped his knuckles on it a few times. He said something quiet and coaxing to the brick – about how it had been a long time, but of _course_ Cecil remembered him -- and an invisible door swung open.  
  
Inside the club was lit reddish, and blackish -- Carlos had gotten used to this idea of a “bright blackness” but his eyes were still adjusting. The club was a big square – a large bar to the left, featuring potentially bioluminescent or radioactive bottles, and a table toward the back where a tall, dark, winged DJ flicked, sighed, and breathed on knobs which produced white noise, the sound of echoing chimes, tiny puffs of smoke, the sound of a wide, flat foot walking on eggshells, and sounds that might have been Ke$ha. A pair of hooded figures were breakdancing. At the far side of the bar, two shirtless baristas – still identifiable as baristas by their waxed mustaches and newsboy caps, despite their lack of sweater vests – were giving a backrub to a man who might have been Jake Garcia (who had filled up three Alert Citizen Cards, giving him the mandatory right to disappear forever).

On the right wall was an old City Council-issued propaganda poster, which had been vandalized with black spray paint to now read:  
  
If you see ANYTHING  
Say EVERYTHING  
And DRINK TO REMEMBER

The middle of the floor was a crush of people Carlos couldn’t identify – mostly human, mostly male or of ambiguous gender presentation, and, if he had to guess, mostly Cecil’s age or younger. Carlos wondered where they could have come from. Did the pierced, gender-ambiguous person with the red mohawk have a day job putting up signage at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies, unseen by all during the day? Did some of these faces hide behind masks bearing the faces of concerned deer? Carlos thought he saw a server from Big Rico’s, looking a little bit less dead in the eyes. But these were all hypotheses.  
  
The danger meter began to pulse, an _oontz-oontz_ dance beat.

Cecil pulled Carlos over to the bar, next to a young man in a _Dark Side of the Moon_ t-shirt, with “Pink Floyd Is Totally A Thing” written on the back in white puffy paint. Cecil waved down the bartender, and gaped at him in recognition.  
  
"Intern Leland! You – were vaporized! I thought you died."

"I did,” said Former Intern Leland. “Ghosts make great bartenders. It makes us way less likely to die as a consequence of bartending."  
  
“Well it’s great to see you. Or your noncorporeal form,” said Cecil. "Bartending is the second deadliest job in Night Vale," Cecil said to Carlos, leaning on the bar. Carlos took a moment to appreciate how Cecil’s pinstriped tunic and purple glitter leggings accentuated his features.  
  
"What's the first?" Carlos asked.  
  
Cecil looked exasperated. " _Library assistant_."  
  
“The usual, Cecil?” Ghost Bartender Leland asked. “Obviously you were before my time, but the ancient tome in the back of the bar records the preferences of frequent guests, and it says you like to be knocked in the head with a beer stein full of absinthe.”  
  
“Alas, I am not so young and carefree,” Cecil said. “Make it a small beer stein. And no knocking.”

Carlos was out of his depth with the drinks menu. "What's a spider-wolf on the rocks?" he asked.  
  
"Exactly what it says," said Ghost Bartender Leland. "You have to go out back and catch it yourself, though."

"How about...a beer," Carlos said carefully.  
  
"Oooh, dangerous," Cecil purred. "I bet they *do* serve wheat by-products out here."

Cecil’s eyes darted to something toward the middle of the room. "Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster!"  
  
Carlos’ eyes lit up. "That's a drink, right?"  
  
"No, it's my friend from college," Cecil said. “Over here, Pan-Galactic!”  
  
“The greater Night Vale Medical Community thinks you’re cute,” Pan-Galactic said, gesturing toward a group of drunk people clustered in the corner, wearing labcoats not nearly as nice as the one Carlos was wearing.  
  
“The greater Night Vale Medical Community hasn’t had a day of sobriety since nineteen eighty-eight,” Cecil said to Pan-Galactic. “And they’re creepy.”

“Come here, you,” said Pan-Galactic, swinging an arm around Cecil’s neck in an improvised hug. “And this is the _scientist_ ,” he said, noticing Carlos.  
  
Carlos noted that Pan-Galactic seemed to appreciate science.  
  
“C’mon,” said Pan-Galactic, gesturing toward the crush of people, “people are going to be pretty surprised to see you.”  
  
So Pan-Galactic pulled Cecil and Cecil pulled Carlos toward the middle of the room, and there were cheers and jokes that Carlos didn’t quite understand. Cecil introduced Carlos repeatedly, gushing, his chin on Carlos’ shoulder, a single finger tracing figure eights over his chest.  
  
A man in an inexplicable cowboy hat – cowboy hats had been banned in 1975 – bought Cecil a tray of something called Raspberry-Lime Arsenic Shots. When Carlos pointed his danger meter at the tray, he found that they were no more poisonous than regular alcohol. He clinked his lone beer in cheers.  
  
Carlos stayed near beaming, social butterfly Cecil, and listened to the conversations. He learned that the DJ was DJ Dark Owl, founder of Dark Owl Records, which he had sold off to his workers when it became “too mainstream.” He learned that the club had been started sometime during a ban on sexual contact in the 1950s. Once the ban was lifted, the space remained somewhere where patrons had relative anonymity, could break laws for a small taste of personal freedom, and could hook up without having to fill out City Council Standard End-of-Date Reports.  
  
With that last piece of information -- that this place was a sex-and-rule-breaking speakeasy – things became clearer to Carlos. When the clubbers said they hadn’t “seen Cecil’s ass around here in ages,” they _literally meant his ass_. They mentioned that Cecil would sometimes emcee some of the club nights, but it wasn’t what he was known for. Someone even broke all the mirrors in the men’s room once, to accommodate Cecil’s “intense mirror allergy.”  
  
Cecil’s hand was still on his chest, and Cecil was still beaming as if to say, look what I have. Carlos tried to analyze how he was feeling, and found he felt proud. Here were all these people – some very attractive people, who looked at Cecil with a certain knowing recognition -- and Cecil still seemed to think Carlos was the sexiest, most important person on the planet.

Cecil slipped away from Carlos for a moment, palmed something off the bar, and slipped it into the right pocket of Carlos’ labcoat. Carlos checked his pocket. It was a condom. When Carlos looked back up, Cecil was grinning.  
  
Carlos scanned the room for sign of the aforementioned men’s room, but still saw no signs or doors.  
  
Cecil played with the hair at Carlos’ temples, looking him in the eyes. “Carlos,” he said, his voice a little husky. “I have so few memories. But much of what I can remember happened here.” He looked away for a moment. “I think that’s because all the illegal incantations here block out roving government-approved mind-wipes. Anyway,” he said, turning back to Carlos, “the memories I do have. The here. I want you to be a part of that. Does that make sense?”  
  
“Yes,” said Carlos. He didn’t have a word that could accurately describe how he felt, about how sweet and strange and beautiful Cecil was at that moment, so he kissed him.

Someone in the crowd whooped and cheered as Cecil pulled Carlos closer into a long, greedy kiss.  
  
“Cecil,” Carlos said, almost breathless. “I think you know that I find the idea of getting it on with you, in a public place, with many interested, wanting eyes nearby, to be very –-“  
  
He swallowed hard.  
  
He swallowed, hard.  
  
“—compelling.”  
  
Cecil chuckled in his ear and pressed his hips into Carlos’, feeling out Carlos’ erection. Cecil always seemed to know.  
  
“But not the middle of the floor, Cecil. Someplace a little more private.”  
  
“Cecil knows where the men’s room is,” Pan-Galactic said dryly. It was unclear how he had heard their conversation from several feet away.  
  
“Stop it. They’re having a moment,” said the man in the cowboy hat.

“I can work with that,” Cecil said, pulling Carlos in for another kiss. Still awkwardly embracing, Cecil guided Carlos to a blank section of wall just to the left of the bar. Cecil kept kissing him, caressing his hair with one hand, groping the brick wall with the other. Cecil’s hand found a padlock at eye height, which confused him, but he proceeded to manipulate it with his long, deft fingers.

Ghost Bartender Leland darted out from behind the bar. “Guys, I am so sorry,” Leland said. He looked at Carlos’ tousled hair, the curves of their legs pressed into each other, and he was even more sorry. “We had to close the back room. Actually, the back room may have ceased to exist. We’ve been running so low on the supplies we need for door-hiding incantations, and we’ve had to run them double strength since the building got bought –-“  
  
Cecil froze at the word “bought.”  
  
“Oh, shit, this was the wrong time to mention it,” Leland said.  
  
Cecil’s voice was measured, but betrayed a deep unrest. “I’m not going to be happy hearing about this, am I.”  
  
It was not a question. Carlos clapped a steadying hand on Cecil’s shoulder.  
  
“Shit, now I have to mention it,” Leland rambled on. “Strex did buy the building, Cecil, about a month ago. I don’t even know how they found out about the building in order to buy it, but they did. There have been appraisers, planners, crews out taking measurements during the day, watching the building for activity. We don’t think they know exactly what it is, but they know it’s dangerous, and they want in but can’t figure out how to get in. So far our classic incantations are working, but we’re running low on supplies, and they’ve somehow managed to break up whatever smuggling rings we used to use to get supplies.”  
  
“That’s pretty bad,” said Cecil. He had known the Sheriff’s Secret Police to turn a blind eye to recreational smuggling. He may have even once been the charming, more youthful face that convinced a smitten police officer to look the other way.  
  
“We think we have enough supplies for another week, tops,” Leland continued. “This is our last hurrah, Cecil. We thought that was why you came.”  
  
“Before Strex takes this,” Cecil moaned.  
  
“I mean, we might be able to blink the building out of existence, so Strex can’t ever claim it,” Leland said. “But the way I see it – that’s the shell, right? They don’t own us. They don’t own you or me.”  
  
The last words hit Cecil like a punch to the gut, but he did not have the energy to contradict Leland. “I feel sick,” Cecil said to Carlos. “Not in a nauseated, I have consumed too much alcohol way, though I may have. More of an existential crisis in the pit of my stomach kind of way,” he clarified. “I need some air.”  
  
Cecil's drunk muscle-memory led him exactly to the location of the invisible exterior door, and he pushed himself and Carlos out of it.  
  
"Are you going to be all right, Cecil?" Carlos asked as Cecil steadied himself on the brick wall outside. The night air was at least cool, and seemingly friendly.  
  
“I don’t know. I should have known,” Cecil said, sliding down the wall to sit on the ground, his face in his hands. “This place was supposed to be beyond _their_ reach. Have they taken everything?”  
  
“No, Cecil,” said Carlos, sitting himself on the ground next to him. He took one hand and tilted Cecil’s face up toward his. “They haven’t.”  
  


Carlos kissed him.

  
“Oh,” said Cecil, smiling shyly. “Right.” He kissed back, letting the sensation wash over him, reminding him what was real.  
  
A speaker hooked on the wall over their heads began to play a message in an eerie, calming voice. “Good evening. Public displays of affection are discouraged within this zone. Please wait for a company-approved representative to arrive to learn more about our Code of Conduct.”  
  
"Oh, bull SHIT," Cecil shouted. Before either of them knew what was happening, Cecil was on his feet, and had taken a big roundhouse swing at the approaching Strex-approved security guard. The blow connected, and the guard toppled to the sand.

“RUN,” said Cecil, or Carlos, or neither, or both. They ran.  
  
  
  
  
They ran out across the sand, on and off poorly-marked trails, until they couldn’t run any more. They found themselves among the stylishly shoddy apartments of the barista district.

“Okay. Okay,” said Carlos, panting. “All I have to do is use my phone’s GPS signal to summon the car –“

“Summon...the car?” Cecil said, also panting. “Magic?”  
  
“No, Cecil, science. It’s a robot car prototype. We’ve been giving it the software to be able to drive itself.” Carlos pressed some buttons, and nothing happened. “Aaand my phone is dead.”

Cecil handed Carlos his phone, though Carlos doubted this would work. “Cecil, your phone is an eldritch abomination.”  
  
“Well, yeah.”  
  
"What now, Cecil?"

"Now, we are going to go home, and I am going to put up the emergency signal-scramblers which I definitely do not have, and I am going to lay low for a while."

"And how are we going to get home, Cecil?"

"I don't know! Maybe a helicopter? The safe kind, piloted by a child?"

Carlos scrolled through the contacts on Cecil’s phone, which was only bleeding slightly. “Who's 'emergency contact number two?'"

"Don't you DARE call Steve."

"I think we're running out of options, Cecil."  
  
“Wait,” said Cecil. He gestured toward someone exiting one of the Barista apartments. The man was clearly not a barista himself – he was short and stocky, mid-forties, in a plain t-shirt and slacks, with a full red beard.  
  
"Arthur!" Cecil called toward the man in recognition, dragging a confused Carlos behind him. "Arthur Tannenbaum!"  
  
The man’s eyes darted around in panic. "Christ, Cecil, why are you using my name?"  
  
“Arthur, understand me,” Cecil said, squatting down to the short man’s eye level. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a man of your station enjoying the company of baristas, especially if you leave a good tip. And I wouldn’t ever want to use your name outside of the barista district, especially not by accident, especially not on the radio. I just need a favor.”  
  
"What the fuck, Cecil," said the man who was clearly Arthur Tannenbaum.  
  
"Carlos and I need a lift!” Cecil continued. “And it would look _extra un-suspicious_ if you took out that balaclava you have in your back pocket, and take that squad car you've got stashed nearby to take us back into town."  
  
“Cecil, what is this,” Arthur said. “You carrying contraband?”

Cecil looked into Arthur’s eyes, deliberately. “I’ve missed you, Arthur.”  
  
Arthur cracked. “I’ve missed you too, Cecil,” Arthur said, embracing him. “I’ve been so lonely since Chuck dematerialized.”  
  
“Can you take us home, Arthur?” Cecil said gently, after a few minutes.  
  
“Just home?”  
  
“We can walk from the precinct if that’s easier,” Cecil said. “But yes. Just home.”

In the back of the Secret Police squad car, Carlos made a number of puzzled facial expressions at Cecil. He motioned with his head toward Arthur, and then toward Cecil. “Did you and he --?“ Carlos mouthed silently, making an obscene gesture.

"It was a long time ago," Cecil mouthed. He made a slightly different obscene gesture, and a gesture indicating 'so-so'. "We're friends."  
  
  


Arthur dropped Cecil and Carlos off at their doorstep. “It was good to see you, Cecil.”  
  
"Well," Cecil said cheerfully, with only the slightest trace of irony, "you know where to find me!"

  
  


 

Cecil and Carlos climbed the stairs to their apartment with some effort, and collapsed on the bed.  
  
“I’m sorry, Carlos.”  
  
“It’s okay, Cecil.”  
  
Cecil squinted toward the window. "Carlos, I think it’s morning. How did that happen? I hate time."

Cecil's phone, still in Carlos' pocket, did not ring, but it started to speak.

"Cecil, this is Lauren. I just got a call from HR, and it seems we have a little...incident we need to speak about.”

"Turn it off!" Cecil hissed.  
  
Carlos pushed a few buttons, confused. "It's on speakerphone."  
  
"I don't have speakerphone!"

"Before coming in to work on Monday, stop by HR," Lauren's voice continued. "Actually, you will be unable to do anything besides go to HR. HR will be there. They will...clear a few things up for you." The phone clicked silent.

Cecil flopped an arm over his face and moaned. "Carlos, am I fired?"

"They can't fire you. You're irreplaceable."

"Plus I have the recording booth equipment rigged to the bloodstone circle so that no one else can -- well, you know. Because of science."  
  
“Do you need – more protection?” Carlos said, grabbing his bedside notebook. “We can brainstorm. Rachel from the lab is working on something that might theoretically one day have use as a weapon, I’m sure we can think up something.”

"Carlos, if I've managed to put you and anything else I love in yet more danger, do you forgive me?"  
  
“Yes, Cecil.” Carlos would suggest later that Cecil reconsider his relationship to drinking, but now was not the time. Carlos took Cecil’s hand. “And I wouldn’t let those fuckers take you from me either.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Tell me what you liked or didn't. Or if I made a typo, or a non sequitur. or if you just want to play with ideas.
> 
> secretsofluftnarp.tumblr.com
> 
> secretsofluftnarp @ gmail.com


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